Sheitan (Satan): I’m becoming more and more convinced that everything that folks do online is directed at making themselves appear more fuckable. I doubt if there any real atheists, radicals or poets out there; just a bunch of guys and girls trying to fake being dark, hysterical and ambrosial. Giving up on religion to appear emotionally wrought and sexually adventurous to the girl next door. Trying to make sense of Hendrix solos, hoping to get laid with the hipster aunt down the street who’s sick of virtually fucking her husband in Dubai. Wasting precious broadband time on downloading obscure films just to have something to tweet about and then maybe… just maybe… somebody might want to cuddle with them later that night. There are even those who diligently brand themselves as cranky introverts, and wait as long as half a decade to get something useful out of it, for instance, a handjob from someone who’s just as traumatized as they pretend to be.

Kim Chapiron’s Sheitan reminds me of one of these kids. While it isn’t nearly as annoying as the little fuckers, it keeps dropping sexual innuendos at every turn. Sexually repressed kids, sex-crazed teenagers, sexy French women with sexy accents to accentuate even sexier double entendres. Goddamit Chapiron, you had a bunch of prissy college jocks, a kickass killer character played by a perennially ass-kicking actor and the gorgeous-looking French countryside and you came up with this? The slow-burning build-up was a bloody waste of time, without any suitable spillage of blood either and the dialogues just laid to waste any chance the film’s characters have to sustain our interest. The conversations between Thai (Nico Le Phat Tan) and Bart (Olivier Barthelemy) made me feel like one of those priests who visit pedophiles in prison because apparently they are God’s children too. No, I didn’t mean they turned me on, you pervert, they just made me feel like inconclusively embarrassed. Roxane Mesquida and Leïla Bekhti just stand around and look like they are waiting for bohemian girl scouts to distribute hash brown cookies to them.

The director owes his firstborn or at least his grandma’s necklace to Vincent Cassel, who single-handedly makes Sheitan worth a second watch. The rest of the crap cowers like subliminal swines when compared to Cassel’s superlatively entertaining essay as Joseph – the deranged sheepherder/caretaker. His intrusiveness is funny as hell as he sports a smile that would make Two-Face’s angry face look like Hello Kitty having an orgasm. The ‘hot springs’ conversation he has with Bart deserves to be YouTubed to death for its hilarity. The half-hearted twist in the climax is a necessary distraction and the final frame would make for an awesome screenshot for desktops. Twitpic this fucker too. You’ll never know, it just might make you more fuckable.

La Horde (The Horde): Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher should have named this one as Zombie Apocalypse because a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down medicine go dooooown. If David Ellis had titled his cult classic as Venom In Transit instead of Snakes On A Plane, I doubt if it would have been as perversely entertaining. If these French directors had came up with a righteously campy name, maybe it would have prepared wankers like me for the inexplicable amount of cheesy violence. Simply put, La Horde‘s Indiran (from Thillu Mullu) to Robin Campillo’s Les Revenants‘ Chandran. This isn’t a moody psychological study about the undead, it’s just a balls-to- the-wall, run-for-the-fucking-hills thriller.

See, the film starts as a showdown between cops and gangsters before the undead show up and turn it into a Towering Inferno meets Day Of The Dead scenario with the world’s tallest building replaced with the France’s dingiest crackhouse. There certainly isn’t any time for characterization or emotive plots as the body count and bullet-spray are just as befuddled as they are slickly executed. Big, tough guys with errr…big, tough guns battle big, tough (continuity) zombies into the night while sub-grouping themselves into a bloody mess. Eriq Ebouaney, Jean-Pierre Martins and Claude Perron chime with a occasional bouts of intensity and maintain a level of toughness that seems plausible. The zombies have some gnarly makeup on that warms my heart, but are way too quick on their feet for my liking. I prefer the slumbering ones; they just seem scarier.

There’s a tribute to one of the scenes in Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible, which again, makes my sun shine a little brighter. Don’t worry, I’m talking about the fire extinguisher scene, not the vile subway one. An entertaining way to spend an hour and half of our meaningless weekends.